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De-mixing is here at last!

Published 23/10/09

Audionamix: not just a character from an obscure Asterix book

Drawing on academic research from French universities, British venture-capital finance and American marketing expertise, Audionamix are a truly global company who claim to have achieved something remarkable: the ability to 'de-mix' recorded music into its constituent instrumental parts. Using five different processing algorithms at their disposal, their experts work with recording engineers to achieve the best possible results. So far, the most high-profile outing for their work has been on the Edith Piaf biopic La Vie En Rose, where they helped to isolate Piaf's voice from its original context so that the orchestration could be completely replaced. And following the surprise ascent of Vera Lynn's 'Best Of' album to the top of the UK charts, they have also been employed to perform the same magic on her most famous song, 'We'll Meet Again'. The degree to which Lynn's voice has been isolated is amazing, and although the soloed vocal track displays some obvious modulation artifacts, these largely disappear in the context of the new orchestration.

The possible applications for this technology are numerous, from restoration and remastering through to remixing and even forensic audio. There are no hardware or software products available, because the de-mixing technique requires extensive input from Audionamix's own experts, so if you want to take advantage of it, you'll need to contact them and arrange a consultation. They're constantly improving their algorithms, and to that end, they've actively looking for 'difficult' projects that will challenge their expertise. If you have something suitably unsuitable, or your're just curious, surf to www.audionamix.com for more details.